Digital communication interfaces provided between integrated circuit (IC) devices are provisioned with expanding bandwidth as device functionality and complexity increases. For example, mobile communications equipment may perform multiple diverse functions and provide capabilities using IC devices that include radio frequency transceivers, cameras, display systems, user interfaces, controllers, storage, and the like. General-purpose serial interfaces are known in the industry, ranging between the Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) interface providing bandwidth measurable in kilobits per second (Kbps), and high bitrate interfaces such as the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCI-E) with bandwidths measurable in gigabits per second (Gbps).
Other examples are defined by industry standards such as the Ethernet standards that provide bandwidths of 10/100 megabits per second (Mbps), 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, Universal Serial Bus (USB) standards that provide bandwidths between 1.5 Mbps and 10 Mbps, and multimedia standards such as standards and specifications defined by the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance including the Display System Interface (DSI) and DigRF, standards defined by Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) and/or the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) including High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), and standards defined by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) including DisplayPort.
In another example, the “Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture” (AMBA) on-chip interconnect defines an interface that may be used for connecting and managing functional blocks in a system-on-a-chip (SoC) or network-on-chip (NOC). AMBA includes the “Advanced eXtensible Interface” (AXI) that may connect one or more master devices to one or more slave devices.
The wide variety of serial interface standards results from the broad-ranging requirements of a large number of different applications. Depending on the application, or generation of an application, a choice of the most suitable interface must be made. For example the evolution of radio frequency (RF) technology from 3 G to 4 G to 50 G presents challenges related to the integration of new capabilities in mobile device chipsets, such as chipsets for Long Term Evolution (LTE) and/or wireless local area network” (WLAN or WiFi), including in relation to cost, performance and power consumption constraints.
Communications interfaces that connect components in a mobile devices can consume considerable portions of the power budgets of the mobile devices, and mobile communications devices and other devices may be configured to enter power saving modes of operation when such communications interfaces are idle. Mobile communications devices typically experience periods of increased peak bandwidth, with an average bandwidth usage that is well below the peak bandwidth. Accordingly, power usage schedulers and bandwidth usage schedulers may need to communicate in order to adapt to changing demands and usage of bandwidth. However, such communication between schedulers may introduce time lags and other inefficiencies in reacting to changing conditions.
As the demand for improved communications between devices continues to increase, there exists a need for improvements in methods for managing the interfaces between devices.